Marvel Cinematic Universe: How can Alfre Woodard play two people?

Examining Alfre Woodard’s role as two different characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Has it really only been eight years since the first Iron Man film and The Incredible Hulk introduced us all to the concept of a shared cinematic universe? Because we’ve now reached a point where it seems like such an obvious idea that it’s amazing no one really tried to do it before. And yet, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is still the only true success story of the format.

The DC Extended Universe, the only one that comes close to being a true competitor, has had, shall we say, a rather mixed reception and none of the other attempts seem to have even gotten off the ground (remember how that Dracula movie with Tywin Lannister was supposed to lead into a universe of all the classic Universal monsters? Yeah, me neither).

And now, one certain piece of casting news has shed new light on two major issues that have cropped up. And I can’t really put much blame on Marvel Studios for not seeing them coming. No one had ever tried to do something like this before, so how could they look ahead to see the problems that come with this particular storytelling style? And yet, here we are.

First, there’s the question of continuity lockout. How much of the franchise’s previous entries can you reasonably trust your audience to have seen, so that you can properly build on them? In the case of the MCU, this has mostly boiled down to assuming the fans have seen the previous movies, but the TV shows are kept pretty much off limits. This reached its natural conclusion last year when Joss Whedon openly stated that he put no thought into tying Age of Ultron into the concurrent story on Agents of SHIELD, and even considered it non-canon for his own purposes.

It’s not hard to see where this kind of viewpoint is coming from. A television show is a far bigger time commitment than a few movies, and many people simply would rather use that time elsewhere. On the other hand, it’s also hard not to be frustrated at how much this handicaps the MCU’s storytelling abilities.

We’ve already seen it work the other way, when the listless first season of Agents of SHIELD went through a truly breathtaking quality leap once it was able to incorporate the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, so you can well imagine how much an occasional appearance from a television character might add to the films.

And then there’s problem number two, which for lack of a better term I’ll call using up actors. The MCU currently consists of 10 distinct properties, with more on the way, each of which has their own sizable number of characters. That’s a lot of actors to juggle, and the big downside is that with all these things happening in the same setting, it would look pretty odd to see an actor take different roles across different series.

This is probably best witnessed with the reaction to Colonel Schoonover in Season 2 of Daredevil, played by the great Clancy Brown. The fans’ reception to the character was twofold: they were excited to see Brown of course, but at the same time we couldn’t help but feel he’d been a bit wasted in this small role, which will likely prevent him from ever playing a more significant character somewhere in the MCU. Multiply this kind of thing by all the dozens and dozens of actors who are already part of the ‘verse, and you can see where this can get pretty dicey.

All of which has brought us to the situation the MCU is currently in with Alfre Woodard. She’s a great actress, and it’s not surprising Marvel Studios would scoop her up somewhere…but what happens when two different sections of the ‘verse want her? Well, apparently what happens is they both get her.

Woodard was first announced as part of the main cast of the upcoming Netflix series Luke Cage a few months ago, playing secondary villain Mariah Dillard. And for a while everyone was happy. Until this past week, when she was also announced to have a role in Captain America: Civil War, as a different character.

Now, the first thing that needs to be said is that this isn’t the first case of an actor “double dipping” in the ‘verse. Laura Haddock had roles in Captain America: The First Avenger as an autograph seeker and Guardians of the Galaxy as Peter Quill’s mother but they were both so small that no one really cared.

A bit more complicated were Matt Gerald going from a prisoner in the One Shot special “All Hail the King” to recurring character Melvin Potter in Daredevil, and Enver Gjokaj having a brief appearance as a cop in The Avengers before becoming a series regular on Agent Carter as Daniel Sousa, but at least their first roles were still ones that didn’t exactly stick with people.

That doesn’t seem like it’ll be the case with Woodard’s roles. Her appearance in Civil War is said to be “brief but pivotal,” as the mother of a child killed in an Iron Man battle who furiously confronts him afterward and first gets him thinking that superheroes need to be held accountable for their actions. Basically, she’s only in one scene, but you’ll remember her just as much as you do Mrs. Kintner from Jaws.

And the funny thing is, it doesn’t take that much work to figure out how to play these two characters as the same person. Mariah Dillard is the cousin of the supervillain Cottonmouth, and while she’s a simple drug dealer in the comics, it’s already been revealed that in the MCU she’s a politician looking to make some big changes in Harlem, which no doubt will have some sinister purpose behind them.

So, maybe she wasn’t really that kid’s mother and was deliberately winding Tony up for some purpose that ties into her plans. It took me about 10 seconds to piece that together as soon as I’ve heard the news.

As for the separation of the movies and TV shows, that’s going to crumble sooner or later. Because the elephant in the room about this issue is the Inhumans film that’s coming in 2019. Ever since the start of its second season, the primary purpose of Agents of SHIELD has established the Inhumans in the MCU, letting us know who they are, where their powers come from, and ultimately setting them up to basically take the place of the X-Men as long as Fox still insists on holding on to those film rights.

So it’s hard to imagine their movie won’t be building heavily on all that earlier material, making it rather a chore for anyone who hasn’t been watching. The people in charge have just three years left to convince the fans that the shows are just as much worth their time as the films, and just like what happened with Winter Soldier, a plot point that starts in a movie and then filters down to a show would be a great way to get that done.

The Marvel Studios brass are still insisting none of this is going to come to pass, and the situation really is as simple as it looks with an actress playing two different roles. But I’m very much holding out hope that it’s not the case. In this current age of instant communication and online brainstorming, storytellers of any kind often have no choice but to tell a bald-faced lie if they want to keep their twists secret, and there’s still a distinct possibility that’s what’s going on.

I definitely think the points above are enough to build that hope on, and if nothing else, we can still probably trust the MCU people to know what they’re doing more than the folks at DC.

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